Location: Brush Creek Area
Date of Observation: 03/07/2020
Name: Evan Ross & Zach Kinler
Subject: A wet mess, to a sea of crusts, to pow, and a Mosquito
Aspect: North East, East
Elevation: 9,000-11,500
Avalanches: A few small wet loose avalanches from yesterday on steep south facing slopes.
Weather: Partly cloudy with intense sun at times and a cooler feel with clouds other times. Calm winds throughout the day, until gaining ridgeline in the afternoon with a light southwesterly breeze.
Snowpack: Low elevations were a wet mess and generally unsupportive to boot. We got out of that by climbing up some below treeline ENE facing slopes where a colder and deeper snowpack provided a bit more support but still not supportive to boots in many spots. The upper 8cm’s was wet. By the time we moved into more easterly facing terrain at 11,000ft the snow surface was already crusting back over. Here, moist snow was found all the way to the ground, and water had recently moved through the upper snowpack and was pooling around the 2/3 crust down ~50cm. Once that upper snowpack refreezes there will be no more concern for Persistent Slabs breaking deeply into the snowpack until the upper snowpack either melts back down or we see a very large loading event. We finished on NE facing terrain, on those slopes anything with a slight easterly tilt or the low angles had a thin crust on the snow surface.
Wet Avalanche issues were the main concern we encountered.
East, 11,100′ Brush Creek area